The next two topics cover the areas of ethics and justice.

When we talk of ethics and ethical behaviour, we are really looking at the questions of what is right and wrong in human behaviour and what underpins our decision making in coming up with answers to these “what is right and wrong” questions.

Justice is linked to the issue of ethical behaviour in that it is concerned with fairness in how things are distributed in society and in the way we treat others.

This includes questions of what is right and wrong in how we distribute things between, and treat, other humans within the current generation, between this and future generations, and how we treat non-human species.

There is a fair bit of reading for this topic – the readings on ethics in particular cover a lot of ground but hopefully they give you a good overview of the topic.

A couple of things are worth pointing out:

First is that sometimes we are presented with ideas on how ethical decisions are made using a one-dimensional model.

For example, we might be given a model that is ‘individual rights based’ where what is right or wrong depends on whether certain individual rights are upheld or violated and so long as these rights are honoured then whatever comes out in the wash is socially just.

An example is a claim that people have certain rights to pursue their own ends without interference and without government taking from them, under threat of imprisonment, part of their income (as tax) and distributing that money to others. If this means that we end up with a large gap between the rich and the poor than that is OK because the underlying principle of protecting certain claimed personal rights is upheld.

We see this type of view expressed in strong conservative political approaches to how society should operate – the TEA party in the USA is an example, and this view is consistent with theories of justice put forward by people like Robert Nozac in his book “Anarchy, State and Utopia” and Ayn Rand in her book Atlas Shrugged.

One of the criticisms of this view however is that it is overly individualistic and we should instead take a more socially supportive and compassionate view of humanity.

Other one-dimensional views include decision making on what brings the maximum overall good to society, or what might reflect a virtuous life, and so on.

Another approach though is to step away from the one-dimensional approach and look at ethical decision making as having many facets and a “one rule fits all” approach being too simplistic

This view tries to recognise that life just doesn’t seem to nicely fit into a one dimension decision making style.

Second, is that when thinking of ethical decision making in the business context – which is the focus of this course – it’s also important to look at things that might influence or encourage ethical or unethical behaviour.

We look at this in the readings for topic 3 to try and think through things such as beliefs, values, processes, goals, routines, incentives and so on that exist in business to see how these might influence our thinking and motivate us in certain ways.

The point here is that in business we can talk all we like about the need to act ethically but if we operate in ways that have underlying motivators to do the opposite, then problems will arise and keep arising.

The last point we’ll cover here has to do with justice.

In this course, we look at justice in a multidimensional way.

Sometimes justice is considered in terms of how things are distributed in society – who gets what.

These ‘things’ can include tangible things like money, food, land, housing and so on.

They also can include non-tangible things like access to the courts, opportunities for things such as to an education or a job, and so on.

A broader view takes into account issues such as ‘capabilities’ where, for this element of justice, simply making sure everyone has access to something – say, food or income – is inadequate: they also need to have the capability of turning these things into a fulfilling life.

Think for example of the time when the Federal Government distributed a bonus to most adult Australians to help stimulate the economy in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis: what did people do with the money? Some probably used it wisely but others made a quick trip to the pokies.

The point is that just making sure people have something – justice in distribution - doesn’t mean this translates into their lives become more rewarding and fulfilling.

The discussion on justice also gives a good lead-in to the next topic area – sustainable business.

Keep an eye out in the readings for the strong link between justice and what it means for humanity to live sustainably.

It is here that we also see the idea of justice between the current and future generations, and between humans and non-human species, come in to play.

In fact, the whole idea of humanity living sustainably is grounded in ideas of justice and what is right and wrong in the way we treat other humans and other species over space and time.

Hopefully the links to the discussions we have on justice, our business activities, will become increasingly clear as we move in to the sustainable business topics that follow.